Who Gave You the Strength?
Why do we celebrate Sukkot in the autumn? If the sukkah recalls the years after the Exodus, surely Pesach would be the more natural time.
The Rashbam offers a striking answer. Sukkot comes at the harvest, when the farmer has gathered the fruits of a year’s labour. The storehouses are full. The family can finally look at what they have built and feel secure. At precisely that moment, the Torah asks them to leave their home and sit in a sukkah.
It is a reminder of the years in the wilderness, when our ancestors had no land, no harvest and no permanent homes. They survived because Hashem cared for them. The farmer’s full storehouse, says the Rashbam, should lead to gratitude rather than to the thought, “My strength and the power of my hand made me this wealth.”
But there is a question here. Wasn’t it the farmer’s strength? He ploughed, planted, tended the fields and brought in the harvest. Why should he deny the work he actually did?
Rabbeinu Nissim,( the Ran), reads the next verse with care. The Torah does not say, “Remember that Hashem made your wealth.” It says, “Remember Hashem your God, for it is He who gives you the strength to make wealth” (Devarim 8:18).
The distinction matters. The Ran acknowledges that people have real talents and that their effort can produce real results. A person may rightly recognise the skill, judgement and persistence that helped them succeed. But they must also ask: who gave me those abilities? Where did the strength to use them come from?
On Sukkot, we step outside the home we worked so hard to build. We can look back at it and say, truthfully, “I built this.” Then the sukkah invites us to ask one more question: “Who gave me the strength and the gifts with which to build it?”
Perhaps this is why Sukkot is zman simchateinu, the time of our joy. We rejoice in the fruit of our own labour, in what we have built and achieved. And our joy deepens when we recognise that the strength behind those achievements was a gift from Hashem, who continues to watch over us.